Jim snapped a twig in two. A tiny ping. ‘Moss.’

No shit. ‘I know it’s moss. What sort?’

He hardly glanced at it. ‘Great Goldilocks.’

‘What? You’re kidding.’

He looked sidelong at me.

I reached over to another rock, covered with flatter stuff, the texture of the gross old dressing gown that Dad used to schlep around in on Sundays, his hairy calves out. ‘What about that one?’

‘Mouse-tail moss.’

I snorted. ‘You’re making them up.’

Jim raised his eyebrows, scrunched his mouth up and gave the slightest shake of his head.

‘Yeah, and that’s’ – I pointed up at some jigsaw pieces hanging off the slim tree next to me. ‘Blurty-tongue moss, and that one’ – waving my finger towards another tree – ‘is called, I don’t know, Wizened cock tree.’

It was ridiculous how nice it felt to make him laugh a bit, even if it was just those spiked breaths from his nose. ‘I’m not,’ he said.

‘Go on then, tell me some more.’

Jim leant back and made a sigh that sounded like he was up for the challenge. ‘Have to give you the best ones now.’ He looked around with a frowning grin. ‘They’re not here, but if you want good names …’ He gazed in front of him. ‘Devil’s-bit scabious. Scottish beard moss. Mountain everlasting.’

‘Bollocks.’

He smiled at his feet. ‘Nope.’

‘How do you know them all?’

He was still holding the two bits of twig in his hands, like cutlery. ‘It’s like knowing all the names of the roads or the buses where you live. We don’t have many buses. Or roads.’

‘Did someone teach them to you?’

‘My mother. She knew them all. I’ve forgotten half of it.’

That was about as monumental an offering as him ripping his lungs out and thrusting them at me. Thinking about someone else being attached to him made him more human. He was just a guy. With a mum. He hadn’t said her name with much of a misty eye, though.

‘Where’s she now?’ I carefully asked the tree next to me.

A long silence. ‘Gone.’

‘Do you – have any brothers or sisters?’

‘I’ve a brother in Australia.’

‘Oh, cool. Have you been out there?’

Another pause, in which branches scraped and you could hear the wind lifting up blades of grass like it had lost something.

Jim got up. ‘No.’

I watched him wander off, dropping the pieces of twig. One, then the other.

He was lonely, then. No family around. I hadn’t dared ask after his dad, but I couldn’t quite see him popping up the road to his pa with a homemade cake in a Tupperware box under his arm – and he’d not talked of friends. I felt sure I was annoying, following him around, making him show me stuff, but – I liked hanging out with him. I didn’t feel as if I had anything to prove. I could just be me, stupid me. And he didn’t seem to mind.